Love Addiction
By Isabelle Amorello
Feeling your chest squeeze, your throat becomes thick, your eyes burn, all you can hear is white noise. Panicked, you need it. Everything within your being is screaming at you to find it. You’re vibrating, contorting, tightening every joint and muscle. The hive between your ears is awake and hungry, the buzz is maddening. The bees are rattled, running into each other out of instinct, dying of dehydration. Moving from your head down to your extremities, the knobbles of fuzzy, clicking insects crawl just beneath your skin. Close enough to feel the sting, the irritation, but still too far away to rip it out. A scalpel in hand to cut away the festering pests under your skin would be a much easier, straightforward cure.
What do you believe to be the antidote? That sweet, nourishing, quenching nectar of golden syrup that will alleviate the thirst, the itch. Oh yes, the honey will soothe the torture, at least for a short time, but where to find it? There are options, honey is not too hard to find for someone like you. You could get the farmer’s market variety, drive outside the city, and pay twenty-five dollars for six ounces from bees that have been read bedtime stories, but this is an expensive and long journey for far too little product. There are the generic grocery store bear bottles, this will probably do the job, and they’re easier to track down, too. Still, the store is many blocks away. You would have to brave the cold.
After several glugs, the sugar will pool in your bloodstream, you may even feel the fat accumulate around your heart. You will have to take care of yourself, exercise the honey away so you can keep consuming it. You will also have to care for this bear jar: keep it at the appropriate temperature, wipe away the tacky excess, protect it from others that want a taste. This requires upkeep, effort, work.
What about artificial sweeteners? They’re much cheaper than honey with no travel required, and it can be found right on the corner at the deli. Those zero-calorie replacements with no nutritional value. The market convinces you it’s just like the original: “Can’t even tell the difference!” “So much healthier!” “Guilt-free.” It even comes in those easy, wasteful, disposable little packets. No commitment to the whole bottle. No mess, no sugar, and no worries. On the surface, it looks like it may satisfy all the same needs as honey, mitigate the bitterness, and soothe the itch. “Calorie-free,” “sugar-free,” “guilt-free.” Nothing is free. Perhaps individually, in moderation, these statements about the nutrition of substances like aspartame are true, but this only works for those who can successfully employ a moderation of sweeteners. Maybe on a diet after the holidays, or to achieve some fitness goals. For most, the Splenda will curb the sugar cravings just enough. Maybe some just happens to prefer the Splenda. Still, everyone knows that Splenda is not honey.
Even if you do manage to get your grubby hands on true golden syrup, you’re not careful with the bottle or yourself. You obsess over it in your possession, you mistreat the package, you leave it out to crystalize, then forcefully reheat it. You cannot control your urges, and eventually, you drink it dry, only to leave the bees thirsty once more and yourself with regret and lingering nausea. You have no honey on hand right now, and you are in a desperate, agonizing state. Your skin is burning with the bees’ poison. They never inject ever enough to kill, but enough to torture. You feel their little round bodies wriggling in your organs, at the nape of your neck, chewing on your brain tissue. Their stingers, scraping along the inner lining of your body, letting you know they need their fix. This feeling is unbearable, you must satiate them. Only real honey palliates the inflammation, those fake little packets will only exacerbate the burn. The incessant buzz is so loud it convinces you that the two are similar enough. Something quick, easy, sweet. Anything to stop this deafening buzz, the crawling, the itch.
Splenda is far more accessible, but a worse fate than too much honey. It grinds between the crevasses of your mouth and has a foul, artificial aftertaste. You try to convince yourself that you enjoy this, that the bees are happy. They hush and slow down their crawl during the ingestion, only to sting you harder after they realize you’ve fed them an imitation. This was never sustainable, and all the sugar-free replacements have left you with stomach pains. Everyone knows that Splenda is not honey.
The bees have only infiltrated your body because your constitution is weak. You did not build up your immune system enough to fight them off, and now they’ve trickled in and multiplied. The bees have so much control over your intake that you live for the next blood sugar spike, hopping from one cheap energy source to another. All the while, your muscles and brain function deteriorate. You spend all your time obsessing over your precious honey, trying to calm the bees, that you have completely neglected the sustenance that will fuel your body properly. You’ve made yourself malnourished, and you think more sugar is the remedy? Soothe the bees, and the itch will be scratched?
In the beginning, it was pure ecstasy in your veins when the bees were fed. Can you say that now? Now the sugar is all you run on, every dose is merely to regulate, not to get a high. You are perpetuating pain so that you can periodically alleviate it. The brief moments when the bees are not gnawing at you are what you are confusing for euphoria. You have a choice: continue the miserable cycle of giving into the insects whenever they rattle, or start the miserable process of exterminating the hive. Both are wrenching, both are agonizing. At this point you are accustomed to the sting-scratch-crawl routine. We already know you can take the pain; the challenge will be swapping the usual for the unfamiliar suffering, which is far more frightening and uncomfortable. The panic the bees ensue makes you spring to action to try to quiet them.
If you could just sit through the burn, allow yourself to feel the tiny hot needles piercing your pores. Scream, cry, clench your knuckles white, whatever you need to do. The bees will never emit enough poison to kill, although they will do anything to convince you otherwise. The truth is, you never needed the honey. No one needs honey. In these moments of craving, you will replace the sugar hunt with real food: protein, healthy fats, fiber, complex carbs. Your stomach has grown so used to the sugar and synthetic alternatives that you’ll feel sick while you grow adjusted to these new, fresh tastes, but getting stronger and healthier hurts before you get over the hump.
There will be many moments in the bee eradication where you will look around at others satiating their hive, the bliss on their face, and feel tremendous envy. You will try to bargain, “I am young, everyone else is doing it, why should I deprive myself?” Do not be fooled, you have heard their buzz for so long that the echoes remain. You cannot be trusted with honey right now, not yet. Your ulcers are still healing, your vitamin deficiencies are building back up. Lean on the less exciting, the far more stable and grounded nutrients that will sustain you.
FALL 2025
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Abeha Choudhry for creating artwork for this piece.
Visit the New Media Artspace at http://www.newmediartspace.info/